


Exit Strategies

by CypressSunn



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Family Drama, Found Famiy Nonsense, Gen, M/M, Sometimes a family is a pack of bickering immortal mercenaries, Team as Family, every family has that ONE shit starter who doesn't care about collateral damage, if you don't know who they are in your family than it's YOU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 10:33:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25968181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CypressSunn/pseuds/CypressSunn
Summary: “I am not angry,” Nicky begins despite all evidence to the contrary, from the hard set to his voice to the throbbing vein at his brow. “I simply want to know the truth. We are all brothers and sisters in arms, a family that must have trust in order to stand side by side in battle. So I should have to ask only once… Which of you is responsible for thisbetrayal?”
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh, Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Nile Freeman, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 104
Kudos: 1164
Collections: 101 Prompts Meme, Book of Nile Collection!





	Exit Strategies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scorpiod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/gifts).



> 101 Prompt, 96: Betrayal
> 
> Hey, [scorpiod](http://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod)! I know sometimes life is a literal trashfire but found family tropes will never leave you! Cheer up, take care, and stay safe!
> 
> Oh, and fair warning: this is more or less gen fic by my standards. I'm usually pouring on the shipper sauce way harder than this. One dynamic is very clearly in the pre-relationship phase, that blink-and-you-miss-it stage...

_It is only necessary to make war with five things:  
with the maladies of the body, the ignorances of the mind,  
with the passions of the body, with the seditions of the city,  
and the discords of families. _ _  
_ _ ― Pythagoras _

The problem is they’re stuck. All private aircraft are grounded from some murky but legal government oversight, and only the most essential commercial flights are taking off. This left the lot of them arguing over how best to get off the continent after the last job. Nile’s discovered that immortal or not, none of them are above petty arguments. These mercenaries spent more time squabbling at the dinner table than they ever did mowing down enemy combatants.

Nile’s also learned the genuine hazards of flying commercial extends beyond the lack of legroom being killer on the knees. While their papers are always in order, a gift from Copley that Nile is ever thankful for, there is no accounting for the actions of the American TSA. It’s a notoriously fickle and posturing administration that Nicky summarily describes as nothing short of evil. It would only take one bored and ignorant bastard with a badge to drag one of them off for secondary security screening and unravel an exit plan. 

And there is no doubt about which in their band will be selected for the hours-long interrogation. For Joe’s sake, they need a better plan of action.

“We could even the odds little,” Joe suggests, scanning over Booker’s shoulder from where he stands behind him. There is little space in their cramped makeshift safe house; they’ve been breathing down each other’s necks for days. Booker has been doing his best to get them out/ He has been hunched over his military-grade laptop on a shaky legged folding table for hours. Nile is unsure how he sits so long in such awful positions. Even if their healing made them immune to muscle aches and scoliosis, it was painful to watch. Even still, Nile keeps Booker company, meaning she was mostly slowing him down and plying him with questions and drinks from the cooler she sat upon. The beat-up old couch in the corner of the room was stained with what looked like unspeakable horrors.

“What do you have in mind?” Booker asks Joe, not looking up from an array of data. The other man scoots in closer. He’s got a furtive look in his eye that Nile’s never seen before. Joe in all his joy and bluster is the most upfront member of their family. But now his voice is low, and he’s watching the door, afraid to be seen or overheard.

Nile leans in to listen.

“We need Mister Jones,” he says at last.

Booker chuckles. It sounds wrong to Nile’s ears, all rumbling and humorless. He raps his knuckles against the plastic table and turns to Joe slowly, staring him unmistakably in the eye.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.” Booker turns away.

“Who’s Mister Jones?” Nile asks after a moment.

“Don’t answer that, Yusuf.” Booker cuts her off, pointing his finger at Joe. “Nile, just pretend you didn’t hear anything.” 

Nile gives him a look; one assuredly communicating she does not like being kept in the dark. He backtracks with “please, just trust me,” in a more acceptable tone.

“Booker, hear me out.” Joe leans against the table, runs his fingers through his long silken curls. He’s got a slick smile on, the antithesis of Booker’s grim frown. “Past experience tells us, nine times out of ten, Mister Jones gets the job done.”

“We are not discussing this.” Booker types faster. It is a signal he is done talking. Joe refuses to take the hint.

“Do you have any better options?”

“Yes, actually,” Booker bristles with a hiss, “literally anything else is the better option. Because those are the options least likely to get any of us killed.” With growing exasperation, Booker slams his laptop keys harder. 

“You’re being dramatic, Book. At most, Mister Jones will get one of us maimed… and it’ll most likely me.”

Booker scoffs. “The rest of us will be collateral damage.”

“So then it’s a good thing we can’t die.”

“Who is Mister Jones?” she repeats, louder. Booker and Joe both straighten up, glancing at the door frame. On the other side Nicky and Andy are settling up supplies. The tension bares down on the claustrophobic room, both Joe and Booker hold their finger over their lips, begging her silence. “Is Jones a smuggler? A drug runner? A terrorist?”

“None of those things,” assures Joe.

“He’s effectively a terrorist,” Booker supplies at the same time, “on my peace of mind if nothing else.”

“He stays off the watch-lists, though. Come on, Booker, you can’t deny that’s the magic of Mister Jones.”

“If… If I went along with this,” Booker sighs long and hard. “What would you need?”

Joe is elated, balling his fist victoriously before he slides a piece of folded paper across the table. Booker looks at it but doesn’t touch it.

“Does that say what I think it says?”

Joe doesn’t even try to ease the Frenchman’s apparent fears. “You just need to tell Andy that you need to go on an extra supply run. Pick it up and bring them back here. And before you tell me no, remember who graciously forgave you for turning us over to a Merrick and his merry band of gunmen.”

“And this is the price of forgiveness? Or are you just going to hold that against me for the next millennia?”

“Whatever it is, I’ll be the one to do it.” Nile stands up, groaning. She is over the cloak and dagger bullshit. “I’ll can make contact with Jones and get him whatever he needs—”

Nile reaches across the table for the folded scrap. Before her fingertips so much as touch the paper, Booker snatches it away. 

“Absolutely not, Nile.”

He’s got a look in his eyes that she’s only seen a few times before. The same acute concern he wears anytime there’s gunfire near Andy, and one other time, she recalls. When he knelt over her after Nile caught a bullet in the chest. She bled out quick. Booker’s hands had been red from the apparent irresistible need to stop the bleeding, no matter how futile. Before long her whole world went black. When she gasped her way back into the pain and brightness, Booker was still there. Looking at her just like this, like he wanted to protect her but didn’t know how.

Nile isn’t sure what to do with any of that, not yet. She is still unsure how to protect him right back from all his long-lived vices.

“You’re not dragging her into this, Joe.” Booker tears the paper to pieces.

“Why not? Clearly, she should have been my first choice,” Joe nods to her approvingly. “Our new blood’s got no fear.”

“Try it,” Booker warns, “and I will tell Nicky.”

Joe looks almost willing to risk it — whatever it is — before he raises both hands in surrender. 

“Nicolò would have found out eventually.”

“Doesn’t mean we have to go down with you,” Booker contends, waving his flask at Joe as he retreats through the back door. Booker props open his laptop again and tries his best to ignore Nile’s withering stare.

* * * 

Andy keeps telling Nile that for all her smarts and dedication, she does not know how to pick her battles. She also claims the fact that Nile never fails argue back when this point is raised is simply more fuel on the fire. As such Nile makes it all of an hour before she breaks

“Are you going to explain what all that was about, earlier? Why shut down Joe if he has an idea? Why not let me help? Or why it is you think I can’t handle this Mister Jones guy?” 

Nile is used to being treated like the newbie. Aside from the fact that she saved all of them from Booker and Copley’s bullheaded scheme, she knows the least about the criminal underworld; smuggling routes and black-market weapons. She’s dealt with militants and radicals and homegrown enlisted American terrorists in the Marine Corps, but it left gaps in her knowledge and left most of her field of experience lacking outside of direct combat.

But she still expected better from Booker. 

She and Booker, they were in this together; the two youngest and freshest into eternity. Nile was the one who fought the hardest to keep Booker in their ranks. Fought to make the others see that isolation would only make him worse, more reckless and stupid. She worked them down from a century to an apology and a couple decades probation. Nile did all that for Booker; and now he was treating her like she had no place at the table making the hard decisions.

“I thought you said I would be good for the team.”

“You are.” Booker groans and slumps in his chair. He repeats himself in French, as if that might make the sentiment more believable.

“It sure doesn’t feel like it. It feels like I am the one on the bench—” She stops when Booker reaches out and takes her hand gently as he swipes his thumb over her knuckles. It’s strange how not strange the gesture feels. Far off in her memory, the touch reminds her of the first few seconds of sputtering back to life. It is always an assault to the mind; a paradox that the body knows cannot and should not be happening but somehow is. The only thing that helps is something physical that keeps you grounded. A familiar sight or sound or the touch of a hand attached to someone waiting to see your eyes open.

“We are a team, Nile.” Just like that, Booker pulls back. “But there are some risks that just aren’t worth it. Trust me. Time will teach you well enough.”

Nile’s anger softens, but only somewhat. “You thought _big pharma_ could be trusted.”

Booker does not dodge the accusation. “I was a desperate man, but I know better now.” This time when he chuckles he sounds like himself. “And… for what it’s worth, I know you could handle Mister Jones. It’s Mister Smith that I’m worried about.”

* * *

Gray sunlight is petering out through the blinds when the soft mechanical whirring fills the safe house. Nile overlooks it, but Booker goes ramrod straight. He swears in French and slams his laptop shut.

“Wait, I thought we were close to haggling down the price of the smuggling boat—”

“Non,” Booker replies. “We’re flying. What’s done is done.”

“What are you talking about? The commercial airlines are gonna shake Joe down, and if they dig deep enough on Copley’s alias for him, we’re all screwed.”

Booker isn’t swayed by any of her valid objections. He packs away his gear and pulls on his coat. Behind him in the bathroom barely big enough for one person, the buzzing sound continues.

“Is that sound what I think it is?” Andy asks from the doorway. “Who got him the contraband?”

“Don’t know, Boss.”

“I didn’t give the oh-kay for a Mister Jones. There’s enough heat on us without adding the inevitable infighting.”

“I tried to stop him, I swear—” The electric purring sound seems louder now. The bathroom door opens. Out steps Joe. His hair is shorn close to his scalp, and his beard is entirely gone. He looks like the same man, only different if you squint too hard, yet Booker and Andy are shaking their heads with trepidation.

“Mister Jones is ready to go,” Joe smiles. In his hands there’s an electric hair clipper with a few stray hairs still threaded through the metal teeth. 

“Wait… what?” says Nile. “Hold up, what is happening?” 

But no one in the room answers her. They just keep staring daggers at Joe and refusing to elaborate beyond Andy reprimanding him, “I hope you’re ready to explain yourself to your husband.”

Joe beams fearlessly. “Love forgives all.”

“Yeah, but it’s us he’s going to blame,” Booker says.

“It’s too late now,” Andy resolves. “Make it worth it and get us the passes, Book. Everyone else, pack it in. We roll out in thirty.”

* * *

Copley can pull a lot of tricks out of his hat, but Booker still executes most of their security needs. He knows which roads are being watched, purchases of items are being tracked by administrations, and how to purchase airfare without raising the alarm. Nile has learned to trust him and his warnings. But she still doesn’t understand what’s so dangerous about Joe’s haircut. She’s not even sure it will get him past the on-the-ground agents at the airport.

Hunkered down in the van that Andy procured from somewhere, Nile and Booker buckle themselves into the middle seats. “We don’t know why, or how, but Mister Jones has never been stopped at security. Not in any port in America or on any other continent.”

“You’re kidding. That could be a total fluke. We’re basing our security on—”

The front door opens. Andy climbs in.

“Nicky’s seen it?” Booker asks her.

She nods.

“How pissed is he?”

Andy raises an eyebrow solemnly.

Booker whistles lowly. “That much, huh? Good thing I got us tickets in different sections of the plane.”

Nile frowns. It can’t possibly be that bad. But the entire car seemed to have been holding its breath, save for Andy who’s tapping her fingers tightly to the steering wheel. Even still, she looks preemptively weary. 

Nicky arrives before Joe, the latter is off still sweeping the last of the physical evidence left by their stay. Nicky, however, is walking a little too fast up to the vehicle with his mouth moving even faster. He looks absolutely irate as he climbs into the passenger’s side and slams the door behind him. He curses loudly before he addresses them all.

“I am not angry,” Nicky begins despite all evidence to the contrary, from the hard set to his voice to the throbbing vein at his brow. “I simply want to know the truth. We are all brothers and sisters in arms, a family that must have trust in order to stand side by side in battle. So I should have to ask only once… Which of you is responsible for this _betrayal?”_

His question is met with silence. Nicky tuts his tongue sharply. “Who bought him the clippers?”

“He got them himself,” Booker says after a long moment of quiet. 

Nicky fixes him with a barely restrained look. “Which of you got him the clippers?” he repeats.

“It was his idea,” Nile hedges, confused.

“So _you_ purchased it—”

“No, she didn’t,” Booker insists forcefully. “She had nothing to do with it.”

“Then swear on your hatred of Napoleon! Swear on your hatred of Russia!”

“She didn’t do it!”

“Does it matter who did it?” Nile asks, leaning between the two men.

“Of course it matters!” Nicky spits. “Did you see him!? My husband and his beautiful hair, his beautiful curls, destroyed! Gone! And for what!? To appease some hateful-hearted villains?” Nicky’s insults devolve into a language that sounds like Italian but isn’t and Nile cannot follow beyond, “bastards” and “sin against beauty.” She leans in closer to Booker.

“What is he saying?”

“Something about the ‘forfeiture of virtue,’” Booker whispers back. “‘Crimes against the very blessings of God,’ and… and I think that last bit means ‘willfully conspiring with evil.’”

“Didn't know a buzzcut could be evil,” Nile remarks. Her headshake goes unnoticed by Nicky in his passions.

“You should have seen him in the forties. He hated Joe's regulation cut so much, he took up a sniper rifle just to kill more fascists.”

“— and that is why you are going to tell me which of you helped him. He was with me all day, he couldn’t have gotten them himself!”

“It’s just a haircut, Nicky,” Nile dares to remind him, feeling like the last sane immortal on the planet.

Both Booker and Andy audibly groan.

“Just a haircut? Have you not been listening? It is a trespass against a divine gift. Removing beauty from this world for a cause so unworthy! I have run my fingers through that crown of hair for longer than either you or Booker have been alive, combined, and twice over. Yet because you are so young, you think nothing of it.” Nicky’s ire flickers for a second before he turns on Andy. 

“Boss, did you betray me?”

“Why would I do that?” Andy’s eyes peer of the rims of her shades.

“Because Booker knows better. Nile is a terrible liar. But you have been fond of cutting your own hair since the middle ages. So tell me, was it you, Boss?”

“Of course not,” says Andy smoothly. “I hate that cut on him as much as you do.”

Nile wants to point out the obvious. That the hair will grow back. But the fact Joe’s latest haircut weighs even with a crime against humanity means it is unlikely to matter to Nicky. Nile can safely say she’s never seen him this angry before; not in the face of battle, not against warlord or criminals, or even when doling out punishment for the most heinous of offenses. Nicky always seem to deal with injustice according to his usual calm manner, somber and fierce. 

But this alone he took personally. His husband’s cut hair would not go without reprisal. And not for the first time Nile wonders what sort of eternity she is locked into by joining this family. If it would always be interchangeably so heartrending, dire, and unpredictably bizarre.

Booker’s seemingly in the same boat when he pulls out his flask and mutters darkly beside her, “I should have picked banishment.”

Nicky drums his fingers against the dashboard, thinking. “Boss, if you didn’t commit this treachery… and if it was neither Nile or Booker, that just leaves—” Nicky’s voice trails off when from the farthest row of the van comes a prolonged yawn that fills the air. Two arms reach up and stretch from the stirring woman.

“What is all the yelling for?” asks Quỳnh. She rubs a bit of sand from her eyes. “Are we departing?”

“She doesn’t even know what hair clippers are,” Andy interjects before Nicky can launch his accusation.

“Yes, I do,” Quỳnh purrs innocently. “The man at the store of convening helped me find them.”

Nicky turns so fast in his seat his body must have to heal internally from the whiplash. “You — !”

Intervening at the most opportune moment, the sliding door swings open, and Joe — or the infamous Mister Jones — climbs in, blocking Nicky’s flailing reach to the rear seat. He presses a brief kiss flush to Nicky’s heated cheek and proceeds, inelegantly climbing into the back. He manages the feat of both elbowing and kneeing Booker while accidentally pulling on one of Nile’s braids.

“Everyone ready to roll?” he asks, buckling in next to Quỳnh.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Andy says, turning over the engine. “And where were you, Booker? You should have stopped her.”

“I had my hands full enough with Nile!” 

“Hey!” 

“Non è finita!” Nicky is glaring at both Joe and Quỳnh through the rearview mirror. Andy whacks him on the shoulder until he cuts it out. 

“I hope you’re satisfied, Joseph,” she mutters.

“Quỳnh happens to think I look very handsome,” Joe laughs, his head at a tilt so Quỳnh may skim her hand through what little remains of his hair approvingly.

“Your beauty is without question!” Nicky proclaims. “It is the principle of the thing!”

“Gentlemen,” Andy interrupts, “table it until we’re across the Atlantic. Quỳnh, don’t do it again. Booker, I need blackmarket Ambian the second we touchdown. In case all of you forgot, I don’t heal from my migraines like the rest of you.” The occupants all grumble as they stop at a light. And cranes her neck to look back at them; “Oh, and Nile?”

“Huh?” she perks up. “What did I do?”

“Nothing; just reminding you that you’re my favorite.”

* * *

At the airport, the Mister Jones ruse really does work. Inexplicably so. It shouldn’t be the case; it’s not like Joe looks ‘whiter’ or any less ‘foreign’, but they take his boarding pass without delay and offer him a safe voyage. “Every time,” Booker grumbles. “Now we have to deal with the fallout.”

Quỳnh seems completely unphased by her guilt. In fact, she looks incredibly pleased with herself lounging against the wall next to her wheeled luggage. She even leans in close to whisper to Nile as they begin boarding. “I knew.”

Nile blinks. “Knew what?”

“I knew when Joe asked me that Nicky would not be pleased.”

“Then, why do it?” Nile asks, eyes darting towards Nicky. He is glaring at every TSA agent he can see.

“That is simple. Nicky refuses to spar with me. I do not like this. I wish to see what he can do, all he’s learned in the last five hundred years. Now I have forced his hand and now we must settle this… _disagreement_.” The crafty grin on her face is nothing short of sly. “I will let him pick the weapon. I hope it is knives.”

With a wink, Quỳnh slinks away and settles under her dear Andromache’s arm right beside the still bickering Mister Jones and Mister Smith. Nile isn’t always sure what to make of her new life. She’s even less sure what to make of an eternity with the most ridiculous soldiers imaginable; the kind that had so much history they swung from skyscrapers, killed in tandem, and even a codenamed buzzcut. She vacillates between dread and delight and cannot be sure where she will land. But she knows something that might help.

“Booker?” she tugs on his coat sleeve. “You still have that flask?”

He shakes his head. “Confiscated at the security check.”

Half grimacing, half smiling, Nile bows her head accepts her fate; that she has her work cut out for her in all her coming lives. Resigned right along side her is Booker, urging her on, the pair of them following the others two-by-two. In the growing rumble of jet engines, Nile figures, if nothing else, Nicky was right about one thing; airport security really was evil.

_**fin.** _

**Author's Note:**

> Post script:  
> I've never had written with this kind of turnaround before. I honestly don't know what's gotten into me. These characters and the sandbox of their world just make me _feel_ things; things that result in this almost-sorta-not-really crack!fic. I normally try and shy away from melodramatics and Nicky deserves better than being painted out as such a shrewish husband. However, nobody but family brings out your worst and most ridiculous sides, and I think all of us (including Luca Marinelli) can agree that Joe's curls are worth a little bloodshed. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
